Trail

Trail

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The Trail object is used to create a trail like an effect between two points. As the points move through space a texture is drawn on the plane the points define. This is commonly used to create effects to help visualize movements like tracer trails behind projectiles, footprints, tire tracks, and many other similar effects.

When a Trail is active it will record the position of it’s Trail/Attachment0 every frame. It then connects these positions to where the attachments were in the previous frame, creating a polygon. That polygon is then filled in with the Trail’s Trail/Color and Trail/Texture (if that Texture exists). Each segment drawn in this way will eventually fade based on the TrailEffect’s Trail/Lifetime.

Creating Trails

In order for a Trail to work properly, it must be a descendant of the `Workspace` and its attachment properties (`Trail/Attachment0` and `Trail/Attachment1`) must be set to two unique Attachments. Once this has been done the effect will create a trail as soon as either of its attachments moves.

It is common practice to either store the Trail in the BasePart containing the effect’s attachments, or as a child of a Folder in the Workspace with other effects objects.

Sets how much the Trail is influenced by the lighting around it. The property can be set to a value from 0 to 1, with 0 being the least influenced by light and 1 being the most influenced by light.

Unlike the Trail/LightEmission property, this does not cause the trail to emit light. Instead, in determines how the trail is influenced by the light surrounding it.

For instance, let’s consider what happens to the trail if we change lighting’s Lighting/Brightness from 1 to 0. If the trail’s light influence is 1, the trail would appear much dimmer when the brightness changes. However, if the trail’s light influence is 0, the trail’s appearance will not change at all, being the trail is not affected by lighting.

Note

This property is not related to the dynamic lighting engine of Roblox. As suggested in the documentation for Trail/LightEmission, it is recommended to create parts with PointLights that follow the path of the trail if you need your trail to emit light.

Code Samples

Creating a Part With a Basic Trail

This example demos the functionality of trails.

In order to do this, we must first create a BasePart, part, which will be the parent of the trail.

Then, we create two attachments, attachment0 and attachment1, both parented to part. The positions of these two attachments, more importantly the distance between them, determines where the trail is drawn as part moves.

For these attachments to create a trail as described, we create a new Trail and parent it to part. We then connect attachment0 to Trail/Attachment0 and attachment1 to Trail/Attachment1.

In this example, we set the Trail/Color to a fade between blue and white using a DataType/ColorSequence. For more info on how to set a trail’s color in a script, see the Trail/Color's documentation.

Finally, to demo the alignment the example relies on TweenService's TweenService/Create to move part back and forth. As the part moves, the trail is drawn.

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